This post could be ranty.

So tune in or tune out accordingly.

A friend of mine, B, was speaking with an older mutual friend earlier today. (I'm not using names to protect the innocent and well-intentioned.) She has a similar employment situation as I do. B is a college graduate, she works two service industry jobs, and she is as clueless about her future as I am about mine.

Before we continue, let me make it clear that both of us are okay with these facts about our lives. 

Aforementioned older friend asked B if she was still working at her current employment. She replied that she was. Then, he asked, "Are you looking for anything else?"

If we're friends, or if you've ever been this situation, then you just cringed so hard. For the majority of mid-twenties college graduates these days, our least favorite question is "So what are you doing next?"

I DON'T KNOW. I'm twenty-seven and I don't have my life planned out, thank you very much and would you please stop asking me that?!

We know that you just want to know about our lives and get to know us. But when we tell you we're working at Starbucks and not in a "career" your next response should not be "Are you looking for anything else?"

When you do this, you're telling us that what we're doing isn't good enough, that it's somehow shameful. You're telling us that the lies society is feeding that your job defines you are true. You're subtly inserting a sense of shame into our hearts about the way that we spend our time and earn our money, shame that has no business being there in the first place.

I know that this older friend didn't mean anything by the question. He didn't mean to make B feel bad. But it still happened. 

B and I complained about our mutual problem for a while, and brushed it off fairly quickly. I'm grateful to have overheard the experience, however unpleasant for her it may have been. Sometimes I forget that this doesn't just happen to me, that it happens to other people, too.  It's reassuring when you realize that other people have the same problems as you do.

I know that some of you, friends, have had experiences like this. I'd love it if you'd commiserate with me and share in the comments. 

Change

This week has been one of the strangest weeks in my memory, so full of contrasting events and emotions that I'm almost not sure how to process it.

This week has left me feeling both affirmed and cut down. Elated and deflated.

Some of you know what's up, and some of you don't. And that will just have to do. I can't really talk about it on an open forum like this. All I can say is that there are big changes coming my way. I know that in the long run, I'll be better off than I was before, but change has never been easy for me.

This week has also left me feeling so incredibly grateful for my family, especially my mom who always lets me call her on the phone when I'm crying and inconsolable, and to my friends. I'm grateful for my wonderful internet friends who have been sending me good thoughts and internet hugs all week. And I'm perhaps most grateful for my super cool roommates-my best friends and sisters.

I wish I could tell all, friends, because I desperately need that catharsis. I hate feeling so mixed up. I hate not knowing if I should be happy or sad, even though I know that most of life is not one or the other. Life is not made up of black and white, but grey, and it is that grey area I have such trouble living in.

Life is change and grey areas and disappointments and happiness, and I feel like I'm finally learning how to let it all go and not worry so much about everything all the time. It's so noticeable a change, that I hardly recognize myself sometimes. I'm finally starting to like the person I am.

I don't feel like entertaining you.

I'm on an honesty kick. I'm busy with work lately, and I've started working out more too, so I don't really have the energy to be fun and entertaining, which is, sometimes, what I imagine blogging is for. Entertaining the masses. Being funny and engaging so that people will like you, you'll be popular, and feel better about yourself. If this is getting to angsty for you, I understand. But sometimes you just have to get your issues out, put them out into internetland where someone might read it and understand and for a moment you might not feel so alone.

My boss asked me today if I thought I deserved success, and I nearly started crying because I didn't want to tell her "no." I almost didn't want to admit it to myself. From a Christian standpoint, we don't deserve anything, but that's another conversation entirely. But everyone should want themselves to do well, to exceed at whatever they've chosen to do with their life. Right?

It's not so much that I believe I deserve to fail, so much as I'm not sure I believe I deserve to succeed. The main problem is that I remember all the bad things I've done, every mistake I've made, everyone I've hurt, every time I made a fool out of myself, and my brain collects them and plays them like a movie reel in my head to make me feel the scum of the earth.

If you're Christian like me, you're going to say to me that no one deserves success, no one deserves anything, which is what makes Grace so powerful. If I actually got what I deserved, my life would be very different.

But this seems a little different. Success is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe you're going to fail, then you probably will. If I keep waiting for the bottom to drop out at work, waiting for it to start getting horrible for me again, then it will. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but eventually it will.

So how do I start believing I deserve to succeed at anything? How to I go from a glass-half-empty to a glass-half-full type? At this point it seems like a genuine personality change. I'm mostly faking it right now. I have this struggle between my emotional heart and my logical brain, and I'm at that point where success is the struggle. As long as my logic and my emotions are still at war with each other then I still have a chance, I haven't given up on myself yet. But is this success at all, even a little bit? Or is it just treading water?